I bought an Nvidia Shield TV pro last week, and am having problems getting it to work with subtitles.
I have ripped all of my DVD’s and Blu-rays using MakeMKV, and all of the files contain subtitles in either PSG or VOBSUB format
But when playing a file (doesn’t matter if it is DVD or Blu-ray), it will 50% of the time not start the movie if I have enabled subtitles, and in the other 50% it keeps buffering every 10 seconds.
I have also tried downloading subtitles via the Plex app (usually in SRT format), but that is extremely hit or miss. Usually it doesn’t actually provide any subtitles at all.
If I use my computer instead as the Media Server, and cast it to the TV via my phone, it works perfectly fine with subtitles.
Are there any settings in the Nvidia Shield that could help this issue?
I’ve tried using Handbrake to “burn in” the subtitles in the movie, and that seems to work, but I really don’t want to do that for 450 movies plus a hell of a lot of tv shows
In the Plex Android TV app, what is the setting for Video → Burn Subtitles?
It should be Automatic.
08-09 20:26:26.909 i: [MediaDecisionEngine] Decision: CanPlay: true CanDirectPlay: false CanDirectStreamVideo: false CanDirectStreamAudio: true CanDirectPlaySubtitle: false CanTranscodeSubtitle: false CanDisplayVideo: true Transcode Reason: Direct play of image based subtitles is currently disabled via the preferences.
I’ve changed it to Automatic, and it got the video started!
But now there is an issue with the subtitles. I’ve tried 6 different movies, and for 3 of them the subtitles worked fine, but for the other 3 there were no subtitles on screen. The subtitle format were all VOBSUB, but it only worked on 50% of the movies on the Nvidia. But works on all of the movies, if using the computer
Do you have any ideas about what could be causing this?
Nope. Not possible to pull log files from the Android TV client. Using Plex Web is the right way.
FYI, a lot of your files have a double extension: Movies/American Made.mkv.mkv.
This is not the cause of your problems. However, you should clean it up when you get a chance.
Also, you should follow Plex naming conventions
Ex: /Movies/American Made (2017)/American Made (2017).mkv
It will pay off in the future. Adding the year helps Plex with matching, especially with movies/shows with similar names, multiple remakes/reboots, etc. Placing a movie in its own folder will lead to shorter scan times as your library grows and you add additional files. Also, it will be required if you want to add extras, custom cover art, etc.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that when adding libraries to Plex.
I’ll fix the double extension and follow the naming conventions, once I hopefully get it to work properly on the Nvidia
You can monitor playback via Plex Dashboard → Now Playing.
On Android clients, enabling PGS/VOBSUB/SRT subtitles should not force a video transcode (the video may transcode for other reasons).
Enabling ASS subtitles will result in the video transcoding. However, Plex is enhancing ASS support in the Android clients. It should be in the Android client beta builds in a few days.
Regarding renaming files, here’s some helpful tools.
PowerRenamer would make short work of fixing the double extension. Search for “.mkv.mkv” and replace with “.mkv”. It shows before & after, so you can see the changes before it renames things.
Many people use Filebot. It is quite powerful and can rename an entire library in minutes.
Tiny Media Manager is also very useful, and has a free version. I’ve used it on several movies with the pattern ${title} (${year}) {imdb-${imdb}}. You can easily set a pattern for TV shows that matches Plex’s naming standards.
PowerRenamer in Microsoft Power Tools is helpful for simple renaming with pattern matches or regular expressions. It makes quick work of tasks such as adding a year to file names, removing undesirable text from multiple files, etc. Simple example: Rip a TV show with MakeMKV and all the episodes have _tXX at the end. You can remove it from all episodes in just a few seconds.
I’m removing the double extension now.
There are no external subtitle files. They are part of the movie MKV file.
I actually found a work around for the ones where the VOBSUB format isn’t working on the Nvidia.
Instead of playing the movie directly from the Plex app on the Nvidia, I instead play the movie from my phone (but from the Plex media Server and Library on the Nvidia shield), and cast it to my TV. So far it has worked fine, even on the movies where the subtitles aren’t working on the Nvidia
Ah ok. I just looked at your logs. They are embedded so the filename would not be the issue. It does show that it was unable to play the file as-is, so it is transcoding the video and burning in the subtitles. I wonder if your subtitle is bad. Can you extract the subtitle and upload it here so I can check it.
You have an SRT subtitle in your file too. When casting, it may be burning in the srt one and not the vobsub. I would need to see your logs after doing this to check. I also need your server logs to verify which subtitle it burned in.
gMKVExtractGUI is definitely the easiest, if you use a program like SubtitleEdit it will probably modify the file which wouldn’t help the test. You can also do it with ffmpeg if you’re more comfortable with the command line:
